The Wedding That Never Was — Jude the Obscure

The day after the boy's arrival, Jude and Sue try again to marry, choosing a registrar's office because it feels more private than a church. Little Father Time unsettles them from the start: unchristened, grave beyond his years, and silent as a tragic mask. Mrs. Edlin arrives with wedding gifts and a grim family tale about an ancestor hanged for stealing a child's coffin, which the boy hears and warns Sue not to marry Father.

At the registry office Sue is repelled by the bureaucratic form and by watching a bruised bride marry an ex-convict. They flee to a church wedding instead, but watching another couple repeat vows they once spoke only deepens their dread. Both conclude they are too sensitive for a contract that already destroyed their first marriages. They return home unmarried, telling Mrs. Edlin they have postponed again while letting the boy believe all went well.

Hardy wrote Jude the Obscure during a time when working-class people were gaining access to education and self-awareness, yet still faced crushing social barriers.

Sue and Jude's tragedy isn't their lack of intelligence, it's having just enough awareness to see their traps without having the social power to escape them.

Jude and Sue know why their first marriages failed, yet that knowledge traps them at the threshold of a second attempt.